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I want to suggest that we are once again on the verge of such aconstitutional moment, a time when legal tradition and the popular willcollide; the popular will prevails, and, as a result, the fundamental lawchanges. In this instance, the drama is being played out in an unfamiliarlocation: not in the Supreme Court, but in state legislatures. Beginningin 1975, the National Taxpayers Union, a grass-roots movement opposedto federal budget deficits, began to lobby state legislatures to petitionCongress to call a constitutional convention to deal with federal budgetdeficits.' So far, this popular movement has persuaded thirty-two statelegislatures to adopt resolutions calling upon Congress to convene a constitutional convention, only two shy of the two-thirds required by articleV of the Constitution. If two other states join the movement, Congresswill either be forced to call a constitutional convention, or to engage inthe spectacle of interpreting legalistically petitions from thirty-fourstates, in defiance of the popular will. On only a few occasions before inour history have we come this close to a constitutional convention.